Yellowstone Road Trip – Part Two

Like I mentioned in Part One, we had spent most of Monday in the Grand Tetons, and then we had met up with my parents and grandparents that night in Yellowstone National Park.  We spent the next four days (Tuesday through Friday) in Yellowstone, visiting some of our favorite areas of the Park.

I thought I could fit all four days into one post, but we took so many pictures it looks like it will just be Tuesday and Wednesday. 

Tuesday:  Spotting and Geyser Basins

Daniel and the older boys  woke up early again (5 am) on Tuesday to go out spotting.  My brother David went with them, too.  We enjoyed perfect weather for most of the trip (70s and 80s during the day), but it was a little bit chilly when they went out that early.

Of course that didn’t stop Ollie from finding bugs to put on his head.

They had a great morning, with another close grizzly bear encounter. 

And some bull elk:

Then they came back to the hotel to eat, and we all headed out for the day (this time we didn’t have to pack up the car, because we were staying in West Yellowstone for another night).

Not long after we entered the park, we could see a bunch of cars stopped up ahead of us, and we looked across the river and saw a big black bear.  It was exciting because we hadn’t ever seen a bear in that area before.  We got out and watched him drink from the river, and then he turned around and walked up the hill and out of sight – I’m glad we didn’t miss him. 

Our next stop was at Upper Geyser Basin, where Old Faithful is.  We got there about an hour before Old Faithful was predicted to erupt, so we decided to eat lunch, then see Old Faithful, and then do the walk around the geyser basin.

Picnicking in the shade near Old Faithful:                                                                           

Henry was in heaven with all the logs to jump off of.  He was especially pleased to be wearing his Batman shirt, which gave him extra powers.

Cindy and my little brother David, wearing each other’s hats. 

Cindy was really shy around my parents and grandparents, but she immediately fell in love with David. I’m not sure why – the last time she saw him she was only 2 months old – but I guess he is pretty loveable. She called him “Dabid”, and she was pretty much obsessed with him the whole trip – she was always calling out his name and trying to find him. Whenever we were driving in different cars she would ask about him, and I would tell her that she could see him when we got out; as soon as would get to wherever we were going, she would shout, “Now, Dabid time!” (she organizes her day in different “times” – breakfast time, applesauce time, play time, David time)

Since we have gotten home from our trip she has learned how to say “David” the right way, and I hear her singing to herself all the time, “David loves you, David loves Cindy.” She is so funny.

Old Faithful:                            

The older kids having some “David time” on our long walk around the geyser basin.  He is a good uncle.

Grand Geyser.  I love this one – it is the tallest predictable geyser in the world.  It only erupts every 7 to 15 hours, though, so we were really lucky to be there at the perfect time. 

My mom is still such a good example to me of how to be a good mom – Lizza was hot, thirsty, and tired of walking around and waiting for geysers, and I had kind of been ignoring her because I was dealing with a tired Cynthia. My mom noticed that she just needed some attention, so she took her to a bench and played games with her.                                            

Our family at Morning Glory pool (yay for Cindy napping in the pack):

Lizza getting to know her great-grandma.  Lizza is such a people person, and loves making friends.  She was born with zero shyness, and connects with people instantly.                         

Oliver at Midway Geyser Basin.  Yellowstone has so many cool places like this, where you think it’s just a normal river, but then you see the boiling water running down into it.

My Grandma Joanne (we call her Grandma Jody), on her 83rd birthday.  I love being named after her, and I hope I am just like her when I am 83.

Grand Prismatic Spring:               

Rachel and Oliver in front of Grand Prismatic.  They loved how their shirts kind of matched the scenery.

Fountain Paint Pots.  Henry loved the bubbling mud. 

Cynthia getting a fun ride from Daniel. 

It was a long and fun day.  Everyone was pretty worn out, and this is what the back of our car looked like by the time we got back to West Yellowstone – all six kids asleep. 

We woke them up (which they were sad about) and took them to Gusher’s for pizza (which they were happy about).

They were also happy about going swimming at the hotel after dinner, especially since my brother David joined them.  Crazy thing happened at this pool – when we walked in I noticed a young mom in the pool with her kids, but I didn’t really look at her closely.  After a few minutes I heard someone call my name, and I looked down and it was one of my good friends from high school.  She lives in Washington now, and I haven’t seen her for over 12 years, so it was a pretty big coincidence to not only be in Yellowstone at the same time, but to be staying at the same hotel, and to go swimming at the same time.  We talked the whole time while the kids played, and it was fun to catch up.

Wednesday: Spotting, Mammoth Hot Springs, Tower Falls, and Trout Lake

Wednesday morning Daniel and the boys got up at 5:00 to go spotting again.  Happy 4th of July!  This time both my dad and David went along – my dad was sad about missing the big grizzly the day before.              

They didn’t end up having any luck with finding bears, but they did see these fun yellow-bellied marmots.  Tristan and Oliver used to love finding these in Yellowstone when they were little, and we used to laugh and laugh just to hear Ollie say “yellow-belly marmot” in his cute 2-year old voice. 

Despite the cute yellow-bellies, it would have been a disappointing spotting morning, if they hadn’t seen this next animal – a lone black wolf.  They were pretty close to it, and even got to see it swim across a river, but they only got one picture of it hiding behind the trees.  It ended up being the only wolf we saw at close range on the trip.  So it made up for no grizzlies that morning.

Meanwhile, back at the hotel the kids were entertaining themselves by watching Cindy play the memory game on my kindle.  Then we got everything packed up and ready to go – after our two nights in West Yellowstone, we were moving to a cabin near Cooke City, which is outside the Northeast entrance to the park. 

We stopped in Mammoth to drive around the Mammoth Hot Springs Terraces.  We also ate lunch there and played around for awhile at the picnic area.  Daniel played frisbee with David and the kids, and everyone had fun running around on the grass.  It felt good to be out of the car for awhile. 

Tristan and Oliver racing.  Nice form with that arm there, Tristan.

Cynthia eating all of my dad’s watermelon:

And trying to catch an elk (you can see it hiding under the tree in the background):

Finding flowers with Grandma (my mom):

Rachel with her Uncle David:                

After a nice long break it was time to get back in the car and head down to the next area of the Park.  Ever since we had met up with my parents, Lizza had been constantly trying to arrange rides for herself in their car, or rides for them in our car.  It was getting hard to always meet her needs, so when we were ready to leave Mammoth, I said, “Lizza, for this next drive you get to pick your most perfect seating arrangement ever, and we’ll do it, and then after that for the rest of the trip we’ll just let people ride in whatever car works best, and just say ‘oh, well’ if it’s not how you want it.”  She thought that was a decent plan.

Here she is with her ideal choice:  sitting in the middle seat of our van with her Grandma Orva on one side, and her Great-Grandma Joanne on the other.  She was a happy girl.

Then we saw some pronghorn antelope cross the road right in front of us and stop to eat some flowers:

Our next stop was Tower Falls.  We had planned on hiking down to the bottom of the falls, but it turned out that they had closed the part of the trail that led right up to the falls, so we decided it wasn’t worth hiking all the way down just to see it from a distance. 

Instead we stayed up at the lookout point and took pictures. 

Someone was nice enough to take a picture of our whole group, but then they accidentally didn’t include Cindy.  At least we can see one leg and arm so we know she was there.  I would be sad, except it’s kind of funny.

After that my grandpa treated us all to ice-cream cones.  I told the kids they were reliving my childhood – I have so many memories of Grandpa Ray buying ice-cream and popsicles for all of us grandchildren when we would visit in California or have family reunions in Yosemite. 

Just after we left Tower Junction, we saw a lot of cars stopped, and we knew it would be a black bear (there are always black bears around Tower).  It turned out to be a mother bear with two little cubs.

The cubs were really, really cute. 

Henry watching the bears from my dad’s shoulders.  It was perfect because the bears were down in a little ravine next to the road, so we were able to see them really closely without being in danger. 

Later in the day we hiked up to Trout Lake.  It is a short but pretty steep hike up to a little lake where some river otters live.  Daniel walked all around the lake until he found where the otters were, and then we all walked over to see them.  I love river otters!  They just seem like they have so much fun playing in the water.  They’re always rolling around and tackling each other.  We stayed and watched them for awhile. 

Our family at Trout Lake:

That night we drove to some cabins just outside of Cooke City, where we would stay for the next two nights.  Our family got two adjoining cabins, and they each had a kitchen, which the kids thought was so neat.  It wasn’t a typical 4th of July evening, but sometimes reading Harry Potter in a cozy little cabin outside of Yellowstone is better than fireworks. 

End of Part Two!

Yellowstone Road Trip–Part One

Every year we like to do a big road trip with our kids, and this year we decided we wanted to take them to Yellowstone.  We used to go all the time when we lived in Utah, but we haven’t been back as a family since we moved to Texas 6 years ago, so our younger three kids had never been.

Here’s what our eleven day trip looked like:  one night in Amarillo, TX, one night in Denver, CO, and one night in Jackson, WY.  Then we spent a day in Grand Teton National Park before driving into Yellowstone, where we met my parents and also my grandparents.  We stayed in Yellowstone for four days before heading onto the next part of our road trip – a night in Cody, WY, then a night in Rapid City, SD (we saw Mount Rushmore and the Badlands), and then one last night in Omaha, NE before we headed back to Texas. 

It was an awesome trip.  This post will just cover the part before Yellowstone.

Amarillo, TX

We started out on a Friday morning, after a minor panic and then repair job for a broken air-conditioner (the night before we left the kids were complaining that it was hot when they went to bed – we went upstairs to check it out and it was 91 degrees up there.  It seemed like horrible timing, but really we were blessed that it happened before we left and not while we were gone.  Also, we were able to find a repair man to come check it out at 10:00 at night, and he was able to fix it quickly the next morning before we left). 

Friday night we made it to Amarillo, Texas.  We ate dinner at this fun place called “The Big Texan.”  I have never seen a place so full of Texas pride.  There was cowboy stuff everywhere.  They also were offering free 72 oz. steaks to anyone who could finish one, but none of us were really up to that challenge.   

All of the kids’ meals came in a little cowboy hat that they got to keep.

After dinner we walked around and played some fun cowboy games:

We made it to our hotel pretty late, but one of the kids’ favorite things on road trips is going swimming at all the hotels, so Daniel took the older five down to the pool while I got Cindy to bed. 

Denver, CO

The next morning we headed for Colorado.  This was at the end of June, when all the fires were burning around Denver, and we could see smoke and fire on the mountains, especially near Colorado Springs.

Luckily the air was still clear enough in Denver for Daniel to take the older kids to a Colorado Rockies game.  One more baseball field checked off the list!

Here the kids are posing with their mountain man father – he grew that beard just for Yellowstone. 

Tristan at Coors Field:

Oliver at Coors Field:

Rachel at Coors Field (I’m not sure if she appreciated the game as much as the boys did, but she did love being bumped up to “big kid” status on this trip):

Dinner at a Mexican restaurant after the game:

Meanwhile, back at the hotel, the younger kids and I were having a swimming party:

Elizabeth and Henry’s favorite thing was for me to take pictures of them falling backward into the pool, over and over:                                                        

Cute little swimmers, all cozy in their towels:

Cynthia quickly fell into a pattern during all the late nights on our trip – a little while after what should have been her bedtime she would start acting super silly and crazy, but still cheerful.  She would do that for about an hour, and then she’d fall apart and start crying until I put her in bed. 

It was funny how predictable she was – we started watching for the silly phase each night. 

Here she is that first night, running wildly down the halls of our hotel.  She kept crashing on purpose, and she thought she was super funny:                            

After baths and jammies, we enjoyed a dinner of Honey Bunches of Oats topped with fresh strawberries (we had stopped at a grocery store to get a few things before we checked into our hotel, and that’s what the younger kids picked for their dinner).  Is that a gang sign Lizza is doing?  She loves doing awesome picture poses like that.

Jackson Hole, WY

Our six happy travelers, on our way to Wyoming the next morning:

Everyone was in awe of the beautiful mountains and trees as we drove through Wyoming.  We don’t have scenery quite like this in Texas.

We ended up driving through part of Grand Teton National Park on our way to our hotel in Jackson.

I love the Tetons.

When we entered the park a ranger told us about an area where a moose had been spotted, so we drove down a little dirt road and got out to hike around and look for animals.  Everyone was excited about our first hike, even though it was a short one, and we didn’t end up finding the moose.

After our hike we drove down to Jackson, got checked into our hotel, and then went back out for dinner at Bubba’s.  We used to go there all the time when Tristan and Oliver were little, so it was fun to take the rest of the kids there.                              

After dinner we went swimming back at the hotel.  This pool was probably the most anticipated one of the trip – we had seen online that it was an indoor/outdoor pool, which sounded really exciting to everybody.  I had told them about the Holiday Inn in St. George that my family used to stay at when I was young, and how it had an indoor/outdoor pool with little flaps that you would swim under to go from side to side.  All the kids were a little disappointed to find that here the door between the pools was wide open, and there were no secret flaps to swim under, but they quickly recovered and still had a ton of fun.  

I took so many pictures trying to get everyone to look at me at once.  I don’t think it ever happened. 

Thank you, Rachel, for still looking at the camera.  Lizza, I don’t think waving at me from under the water counts.

My little swimmer boy:              

Relaxing in the outdoor hot tub:

This was by far Cynthia’s favorite hotel of the trip because they had big fake bear statues all over the place.  She loved trying to find them everywhere. 

Besides her crazy time routine, Cynthia also fell into a pattern of doing what she calls “set ups” at each of our hotels.  Probably because she is a Mott, and that’s what my kids do when they are surrounded by chaos.  Here she is making a nice line out of everybody’s shoes:

Grand Teton National Park

The next morning Daniel, Tristan, and Oliver woke up at 5:00 to go spotting (look for animals).  One of the best times to spot is in the early morning, and they didn’t want to miss anything.

Daniel had tried to prep the boys for the fact that lots of times you get up early to spot and still don’t have any luck– he didn’t want them to be too disappointed if they didn’t see anything.  They ended up having an amazing morning, though.

Starting with this sunrise:

And two bald eagles:

And then the first grizzly bear of the trip!! Daniel was pretty excited about this one, because while we’ve seen lots of grizzlies in Yellowstone before, this was the first grizzly he had seen in the Tetons.

Plus, she had three little cubs with her, which made it even more amazing:

Then, as if that wouldn’t have been enough, they also saw two bull moose:

And some mule deer bucks:

They could not believe what good luck they had. 

Meanwhile, back at the hotel we were doing our own hunt for bears:

And we were enjoying the delicious breakfast. Now that we were at our third hotel of the trip, Rachel and Elizabeth were pretty much breakfast pros – they knew what they wanted and how to help themselves.  They loved all the fresh fruit.

Cindy, on the other hand, just liked to set up all her potatoes in little lines:

Daniel and the boys got back from the hotel (with big grins on their faces) just in time to grab some breakfast before the kitchen closed, and then we packed up the car and headed back out for a day in the Tetons.

The first thing we did was drive back to the area where they had seen the two moose, and we were lucky enough to find them again.  We were the first ones to spot them this time, but pretty soon a big crowd had gathered:

Moose-watching:

Then we drove over to Jenny Lake to do the hike to Hidden Falls.  Daniel and I did this hike when Oliver was a baby, and we wanted to do it again with all the kids. The first time we hiked it we took a boat across the lake to get to the falls, and then hiked the 3 miles back from the falls.  This time we decided to hike the three miles first, see the falls, and then take the boat on the way back. 

We quickly realized that just the two of us hiking 3 miles with a young Tristan and baby Ollie on our backs was a lot easier and quicker than hiking 3 miles with all six kids.  I started wondering if maybe we should have taken the boat both there and back from the falls.

We hadn’t brought a backpack on the trip, so we started the hike just carrying Cynthia, but after about the first 3 minutes we realized that was not going to work (she was way too squirmy, and just wanted to walk, which would have taken all day), so I quickly ran back to the car and got her old Baby Bjorn pack – she really is too big for it, but I was so glad we brought it – as soon as I put her in it, she fell right asleep.  It made the hike much easier.

The older kids running on ahead:

Taking a break by the side of the lake.  You can tell from Lizza’s face that by this time we were all getting hot and tired.  It was a long hike.

Little Henry was such a trooper.  I don’t think any of our 3-year olds have hiked 3 miles before.  A lot of it was uphill and really rocky.  Plus it was his naptime.  He fell probably 25 times (not an exaggeration), but he was such a good sport and never cried.

When we finally made it to the waterfall, he lay down right in the dirt to rest:

Hidden Falls:                          

Everybody was happy about taking the boat ride back across the lake:

After our hike we left the Tetons and drove into Yellowstone.  All of the kids fell asleep and took a nice long nap.  Oliver was the first to wake up, so he got to get out at a few spots to see some waterfalls with Daniel.

Moose Falls:

Lewis Falls:                             

That evening we met up with my parents and little brother, and also my grandparents.  They had gotten to Yellowstone earlier in the afternoon.  It was so good to see them.

We all drove through the park to get to our hotel in West Yellowstone, MT (a little city just outside the west entrance of the park).

On our way we had one of our favorite wildlife encounters of the trip – two beavers swimming along in the Yellowstone River.  We all got out to watch them swim, and we ended up following them for quite awhile down the river. 

We got to our hotel late that night, ate dinner, and then got everyone to bed. 

End of part one.